Raise a glass: House panel finds anti-drinking bias in Biden-era study warning of alcohol risks

Advocates against alcoholic beverages were behind a Biden administration study aimed at drastically changing the federal government’s dietary guidelines on drinking, a House panel has concluded.

A group of scientists appointed under President Biden concluded last year that even one drink daily increases health risks, and it sought to align U.S. guidelines with those of Canada, which advises that “no amount” of alcohol is healthy to consume.

House Republicans on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee said the Alcohol Intake and Health Study was “fraught with bias” and run by a panel of teetotalers, three of them from Canada, seeking to implement the Canadian guidelines’ warning against alcohol consumption in the United States. 

“All six study group members are anti-alcohol advocates who had conducted previous research linking negative health outcomes with alcohol,” the report said. “The evidence points to the study group having a pre-determined goal — to publish a biased study that parroted a ‘Canadian model’ conclusion that no amount of alcohol consumption is safe.”

The House committee released the report hours before the Trump administration announced a new slate of U.S. dietary guidelines on food and beverages. For the first time in decades, it does not advise a specific limit on how much alcohol Americans should consume.

The guidelines, issued by the Health and Human Services Department and the Department of Agriculture, advised people to limit their consumption of alcoholic beverages and to “consume less alcohol for better overall health.”

The guidelines abandon the previous federal recommendation that men consume two drinks or fewer per day, that women consume no more than one drink, and that people who do not drink “should not start drinking for any reason.”

The new guidelines advise certain people to avoid alcohol, among them pregnant women and people recovering from alcohol addiction. Those with a family history of alcoholism should “be mindful” of consuming alcohol, the guidelines state.

The Biden administration’s alcohol advisory group sought far more restrictive guidance. It wanted a warning against even moderate consumption.

In September, officials from the Health and Human Services Department said they would not use the study’s findings or present them to Congress.

The Washington Times has reached out to authors of the Biden administration study and the Health and Human Services Department.

Kevin Shield, a senior scientist at the Toronto-based Institute for Mental Health Policy Research and one of the study’s leading authors, said the House panel is incorrect to accuse the group of using a Canadian model.

“The code and data sources were written specifically for the U.S. In no way, shape or form is this a Canadian model. I don’t know where they got this information from,” Mr. Shield told The Times. He also disputed the accusation that his research is focused solely on opposition to alcohol. Some of his studies focus on benefits, including an association with a lower risk of diabetes, he said.

The Alcohol Intake and Health Study found that even low consumption of alcohol raised the risk for seven types of cancers and other diseases, such as cirrhosis of the liver.

A draft of the study was released in January 2025 and remains on the Health and Human Services Department website. It advises that “the risk of dying from alcohol use begins at low levels of average use.” It found that those risks increased with higher consumption of alcohol.

Just one drink per day, the study concluded, increased risks of liver cirrhosis, esophageal cancer and oral cancer but lowered the risk of stroke.

For women, one drink per day raised the risk of liver cancer but lowered the risk of diabetes.

The oversight committee said the study was compromised by the Biden administration’s desire to align the U.S. with Canada. Internal emails revealed that the researchers had decided in advance to follow the “Canadian model.” All three Canadian scientists on the study were affiliated with creating Canada’s warning against any alcohol consumption.

The oversight panel said the study was not legally sanctioned to influence U.S. dietary guidelines, which are issued every five years and provide Americans with guidance on healthy food and beverage choices.

Congress allocated $1.3 million and authorized the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to conduct a study of alcohol’s impact on health and “affirmed twice that NASEM was the sole group” to conduct the study and inform the federal dietary guidelines.

The national academies study concluded with “moderate certainty” that moderate alcohol consumption compared with not drinking at all is associated with lower all-cause mortality, which refers to the total number of deaths in a population from any cause.

The study found links between drinking and cancer. Specifically, it found that consuming moderate amounts of alcohol raises the risk of female breast cancer and that higher amounts of moderate consumption are associated with a higher risk of colorectal cancer compared with lower amounts of consumption.

Critics said the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study was flawed because it is based largely on studies that examine how alcohol consumption is connected to death from any cause. The study methods can lead to overly broad conclusions that overstate the protective effects of alcohol and understate its dangers, critics said.

“Using flawed research to inform the public about alcohol sends mixed messages about its risks,” Alcohol Research Group scientist Priscilla Martinez said. “The best available science simply doesn’t support the idea that a nightly drink is good for you.”

Alcohol consumption may be on the decline in the U.S.

A  Gallup poll found that the percentage of U.S. adults who say they drink alcohol has dropped to 54%, the lowest in the poll’s 90-year trend and down from 58% in 2024 and 62% in 2023.

The opinion research firm CivicScience said a record number of people 21 and older are “at least somewhat likely” to participate in “Dry January” and abstain from consuming alcohol. The poll of 920 adults found that 56% planned to participate, up from 54% in 2025 and 52% in 2024.

Alcoholic beverage sales were down 3% last year from 2024, according to a July report from NielsenIQ.